Trinity Laban welcomes John McLaughlin as our new Visiting Fellow in Improvisation. A world-leading guitarist, bandleader, and composer in jazz, Grammy-award winning John McLaughlin combines technical virtuosity with an eclectic musical style and a trailblazing approach to improvisation.
This week, Trinity Laban welcomed John McLaughlin to King Charles Court in his new role as Visiting Fellow in Improvisation. Our bands performed a variety of jazz repertoire to John on Monday. The performers included Chelsea Carmichael‘s band – featuring Oli Doyle (saxophone), Ted Porter (trumpet), Tom Shooter (piano), Max Goodall (guitar), Tom Sheen (double bass), and Louis Chapman (drums) – SULA (Kezia Abouma on piano, Aleks Dimitrova on double bass, Miranda Radford on drums) with Jonny Mansfield on vibraphone, and a band with Ollie Young (guitar), Ted Porter (trumpet), Tom Sheen (double bass), and Noah Ojumu (drums). The Duke Ellington Repertory band, led by Calum Gourlay, concluded the sharings. John provided insightful feedback to the students and shared anecdotes about his time playing with Miles Davis. On Tuesday, John gave a lecture on his harmonic concept at Blackheath Halls, discussing ways of practising improvisation with harmonic and melodic minor modes. He gave an introduction to the South Indian rhythmic concept of Konokol. The students got to participate and did a few exercises with him exhibiting.
Over a career spanning six decades, John has defied musical convention by fusing jazz with rock, classical music, flamenco, and blues, while blending the traditions of western and eastern music. Often described as the world’s best guitarist, he is celebrated for his work with seminal fusion groups the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Lifetime. He has collaborated with a range of legendary artists, including Miles Davis, Paco de Lucia, and Jimmy Page.
John began his career playing blues and rock in London in the early 60s and performed free jazz with important British figures, including John Paul Jones and Ginger Baker. Upon moving to the United States, he contributed to Miles Davis’s early classic albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, On the Corner, and Live-Evil. In the 1970s, John played in Tony Williams’s jazz-rock trio Lifetime and formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra, recording popular albums such as The Inner Mounting Flame and Visions of the Emerald Beyond. Forming the trio Shakti, John performed acoustic guitar with Indian violinist L. Shankar and tabla player Zakir Hussain to worldwide acclaim. His notable later works include Industrial Zen, Floating Point, Five Peace Band Live, which won a Grammy award for best jazz instrumental album, while his solo on Miles Beyond won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Improvised Jazz Solo.
Commenting on his appointment, John McLaughlin says: “I just spent a couple of days with some very fine young musicians and Associate Director Hans Koller at Trinity Laban in London. I’m impressed with their enthusiasm, their love of Jazz, their determination and self discipline. Bravo!”
Artistic Director of Trinity Laban Professor Aleks Szram says: “It is a great honour to welcome John McLaughlin, one of the world’s finest musicians, to Trinity Laban. John will work with our students as our new Visiting Fellow in Improvisation, and his unique expertise as an educator and collaborator across multiple genres will provide inspiration for students across our many departments. At Trinity Laban one of our core values is ‘pioneering’; there is surely no better exemplar than John McLaughlin to demonstrate to our students how this value can be embodied through artistic practice.”
Associate Director of Music and Head of Jazz at Trinity Laban Dr Hans Koller says: “We are so thrilled to welcome the legendary, extraordinary, Doncaster-born, Miles-alum, Mahavishnu-maker John McLaughlin to Trinity Laban. This is unreal!”